[solved] Unable to find root device

Hi there,

I just installed arch yesterday for the first time. When trying to boot I am getting the message "Unable to find root device." Prior to this I was trying to install virtualbox and I know that has some kernel 'stuff' for lack of a better word that I know.

During install I recall choosing the option to have Arch partition everything for me, as result, I have a seperate boot partition. I ameded the instructions on that thread to include "mount /dev/sda1 boot/" which did seem to populate the folder with the correct stuff.

However, I'm getting all sorts warnings which are presumbly resuliting in the solution not fixing the situation. I have to type these out manually so I will give a sample

pacman -S udev
..
..
warning: could not get filesystem information for /bootmnt: No souch file or directory
warning: could not get filesystem information for /cowspace: No such file or directory
..
warning: could not get filesystem information for /bootmnt: No such file or directory

My best guess is that I am not mounting the boot partition properly.

But, I was loving my new Arch desktop, any help would be greatly appretitiated.

Re: [solved] Unable to find root device

Re: [solved] Unable to find root device

you are quite right, I'm not entirely sure of my boot partition, I had peviously only ever thrown everything on one partition, thus I don't know much about boot partitions. I found a way to copy the fdisk -l output and here it is http://pastebin.com/SeTG8DYn

sda1 has a boot flag and is realtivly small and is not a usb key thus that is the one I chose. Though to be honest there are a few entries on there that I don't understand.

* Has your install ever succesfully booted or are you running into issues at your first boot? If it has worked before, when did it stop working (updates of certain packages,...)?* Which is the exact error/message you get at boot time?* Could you post the content of the following files? - /etc/fstab - Your bootloader config file (/boot/grub/menu.lst if you're using GRUB, /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg if you're using syslinux).

Re: [solved] Unable to find root device

both are now giving me the "could not get filesystem information" http://i.imgur.com/fy8jSh.jpg though. I'm not sure how that changed for mkinitcpio

edit: possibly ignore this, hold on

edit2: yep! ignore this, those warnings I guess didn't matter. Thanks a bunch for all the help!

For the those wondering, "pacman -Sf mkinitcpio" seemed to do the trick!

That alone, or that in addition to all of the other commands you typed with the arch live cd? I'm having the exact same issue... T_T why does Linux hate me... Anyone know what causes this? I want to know because at this point with so many different issues and so many reinstalls, it just seems like my computer is rejecting Linux like a donated organ.

Re: [solved] Unable to find root device

OK, I got it to work, thanks Gcool especially!

But, I still wonder... wtf happened? I'm glad everything's working OK, but I have no idea why it did this. I kind of feel like my computer is about as stable as a 3 year old on a unicycle; practically every other time I reboot it it's doing some sort of shenanigans.